DPI Reports

Below are reports released by the Death Penalty Information Center since its incep­tion, cov­er­ing sub­jects such as race, inno­cence, politi­ciza­tion, costs of the death penal­ty, and more. When open­ing a report, please allow the report page to load ful­ly before select­ing links to sec­tions or foot­notes. Most of these reports are also avail­able in print­ed form from DPIC. For a copy of one of these reports, e‑mail DPI. For bulk orders, please down­load our Resource Order Form.

Reports are sep­a­rat­ed into Year End Reports, In-Depth Reports, and Special Reports. In-Depth Reports are DPI’s sig­na­ture long, thor­ough reports on major death-penal­ty issues. These include ​“The 2% Death Penalty,” exam­in­ing geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, and ​“Behind the Curtain,” cov­er­ing secre­cy in the death penal­ty sys­tem. Special Reports are short­er, and typ­i­cal­ly address a spe­cif­ic event or ques­tion. These include DPI’s expla­na­tion of the 2017 spate of exe­cu­tions that were sched­uled in Arkansas, and our analy­sis of the largest num­ber of exe­cu­tions per­formed on a sin­gle day.
 

Reports: 56 — 60

Jun 04, 1998

The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides

The results of two new stud­ies which under­score the con­tin­u­ing injus­tice of racism in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty are being released through this report. The first study doc­u­ments the infec­tious pres­ence of racism in the death penal­ty, and demon­strates that this prob­lem has not slack­ened with time, nor is it restrict­ed to a sin­gle region of the coun­try. The oth­er study iden­ti­fies one of the poten­tial caus­es for this con­tin­u­ing cri­sis: those who are mak­ing the crit­i­cal death penalty…

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Dec 01, 1997

The Death Penalty in 1997: Year End Report

The num­ber of exe­cu­tions in 1997 eas­i­ly sur­passed the high­est fig­ure for any year since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. As of December 15, 1997, there were 74 exe­cu­tions in the coun­try this year, 18 more than in 1995, the pre­vi­ous record year. The last time more peo­ple were exe­cut­ed in a sin­gle year in the United States was 1955, when 76 peo­ple were exe­cut­ed. The exe­cu­tions this year brought the over­all total since the rein­state­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to 432. The nation­al death…

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Jul 01, 1997

Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Danger of Executing the Innocent

The dan­ger that inno­cent peo­ple will be exe­cut­ed because of errors in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is get­ting worse. A total of 69 peo­ple have been released from death row since 1973 after evi­dence of their inno­cence emerged. Twenty-one con­demned inmates have been released since 1993, includ­ing sev­en from the state of Illinois alone. Many of these cas­es were dis­cov­ered not because of the nor­mal appeals process, but rather as a result of new sci­en­tif­ic tech­niques, inves­ti­ga­tions by journalists,…

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Dec 17, 1996

The Death Penalty in 1996: Year End Report

The over­all pace of exe­cu­tions in the United States remained high in 1996 and the prospects for the future are for even greater num­bers of peo­ple put to death each year. As of December 17, there were 45 exe­cu­tions, most­ly by lethal injec­tion. This rep­re­sents a slight drop from last year when 56 exe­cu­tions rep­re­sent­ed the high­est num­ber since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976. The 20% decrease in exe­cu­tions this year was prob­a­bly due to the pas­sage of numer­ous fed­er­al and state laws…

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Oct 18, 1996

Killing for Votes: The Dangers of Politicizing the Death Penalty Process

The infu­sion of the death penal­ty into polit­i­cal races is reach­ing new extremes and dis­tort­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Although the use of death sen­tences to gain polit­i­cal lever­age is cer­tain­ly not new, the dem­a­goguery aimed at esca­lat­ing exe­cu­tions has become more per­va­sive. Not only are can­di­dates for leg­isla­tive office cam­paign­ing loud­ly on the death penal­ty, even judges and local pros­e­cu­tors are cit­ing the num­bers of peo­ple they have sent to death row in their cam­paigns for office.

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